It has long been known to chop continuous fibers or fiber strands into short lengths of about 3 inches or shorter. Billions of pounds of such product including chopped glass fibers and fiber strands are produced each year in process and chopping apparatus such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,970,837, 4,551,160, 4,398,934, 3,508,461, and 3,869,268, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference. The choppers disclosed in these patents comprise a blade roll containing a plurality of spaced apart blades for separating the fibers into short lengths, a backup roll, often or preferably driven, which the blades work against to effect the separation and which pulls the fibers or fiber strands and in some cases, an idler roll to hold the fibers or fiber strands down onto the surface of the backup roll. In the chopped fiber processes disclosed in these patents, the chopper is often the item most limiting the productivity of the processes. These processes typically operate continuously every day of the year, 24 hours each day, except for furnace rebuilds every 5-10 years.
The above choppers must be serviced every few hours, shifts or days, depending on the type of material being chopped, to replace a worn backup roll, a blade roll, or both and sometimes other components of the chopper. These service shutdowns of the chopper often mean that all of the bushings being served by the chopper are not only disrupted, but do not produce any salable product until the chopper is again running and the strands from each of the bushings have been restarted into the chopper. It usually takes 10-15 or more minutes to stop and service the chopper and to restart all of the 5-14 bushings that are normally served by the chopper. The fiberizing bushings usually do not run well for the first hour or two after a chopper service shutdown because the bushings loose their temperature equilibrium and uniformity during the disruption and it takes a period of time to regain the desired equilibrium. During this time the productivity is also reduced and the manual labor demand is increased.
Any improvement in the chopper that would allow the chopper to pull and chop faster and/or for longer times between service shutdowns, and/or to pull and chop more fibers or fiber strands at a time would have an extremely positive impact on productivity and production costs. The invention comprises improvements to the type of chopper shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,551,160. Problems exist with this type of chopper that cause interruptions in production limiting productivity and causing higher than necessary manufacturing costs. Some of these problems are strand breakage in the chopper prior to chopping and resulting roll wraps. Each running strand, due to the high speed it is being pulled and the nature of the strand, is subject to being broken by interference from the loose end of a broken strand, fuzz clumps comprised of a web of chopped or broken fibers, and the worn, rough surface of the backup roll. When a strand breaks, the productivity of the fiberizing bushing is lost for a few minutes until the bushing beads down and the resulting new fiber strand is started back into the chopper. Also, too frequently, when a strand breaks at the chopper, an idler roll wrap or a strand guide roll wrap resulting in or requiring most or all of the strands to be broken out, the wrapped roll cleared of the wrapped strand or strands, and each of the fiber strands from each of the fiberizing bushings laced back into the chopper. Typical production time lost for the entire bushing leg from a roll wrap is about 10 minutes.